Jason Freese

A Session and Touring Veteran Embraces the JUPITER-80

Jason Freese (photo)

Jason Freese is one of the busiest keyboardists in the business, in demand as a session player, touring musician, producer, and composer. He’s appeared on more than 50 albums by over 35 different artists, including Platinum-selling acts Green Day, Goo Goo Dolls, and Jewel. In addition, Jason has been Green Day’s touring keyboard player since 2003, a gig that also allows him to show off his skills on saxophone and trombone.

A longtime Roland player, Jason’s been using our synths since the beginning of his long career. On the road with Green Day, a single Fantom-G8 has provided all the sounds he needs, and he’s been extremely happy with it. But his recently acquired JUPITER-80 has sparked a new level of admiration and inspiration, prompting him to say, “There’s really not a more versatile keyboard than this keyboard, period.” He’s already put the JUPITER-80 into the top spot in his everyday rig, using it on sessions for Green Day’s upcoming album, TV and film composing, and a new project called Watershow that includes his well-known brother Josh on drums.

What projects are you currently working on?

Currently, I’m working on Green Day’s new album, which we just started recording on Valentine’s Day. That’s going to be a pretty long process; we’re tracking a lot of songs for it, so that is obviously the forefront of what I’m doing right now. I’m [also] doing a side project, playing on a metal album. Toby Wright is the producer: he produced Slayer [and] Metallica. The JUPITER-80 is saving me on it. I’ve never really done a lot of metal keyboard playing, so they gave me a whole of bunch of metal songs with keyboards, and it was okay, all right, I got it: a lot of strings, and a lot of sawtooth ’80s patches. I’m like, “I know the perfect keyboard.”

I also played on Michael Bublé’s last Christmas album a couple of months ago. And then I’m doing my own project with my brother and the bass player in Lit, Kevin Baldes, and Mike Doherty, who played guitar in Papa Roach for a while. [It’s] called Watershow, and we’re just about to mix the whole album, and that is really exciting. I’m trying to have that finished before Green Day leaves on tour, all done and printed.

How long have you had a JUPITER-80?

For about a month and a half; it is awesome. I’m a huge, huge Roland fan from the beginning. I remember standing in the NAMM show playing the JUNO-106 the year it came out, which was a long time ago. And I had a JUPITER-6 and a JUPITER-8. I had the JP-8000—I had like three of those. Now I have the JP-8080. I’ve been such a fan of the lineage of the JUPITER series.

When I found out there was a new JUPITER coming out and it was going to be a flagship keyboard, I was very excited, but I didn’t really know what to expect. The old JUPITERs were all analog, so is this going to be a fully analog keyboard? I had no idea what to expect. So when I got it, I opened it up and I was like, “Oh my gosh. This is so cool.” It’s got the full SuperNATURAL library on it, the pianos and the cellos and the violins, and I was like, this is unbelievable. And then you have all of the amazing Rhodes sounds on it. This is a universal keyboard.

I thought it was going to be just the analog deal and it’s not—this is going to become my main keyboard. I was just expecting [it] to be kind of a fun analog keyboard that I could pull out whenever I needed to do the cool analog stuff. I didn’t realize it was going to become my main workhorse, especially in the studio. In the studio, you need a versatile keyboard, and there’s really not a more versatile keyboard than this keyboard, period.

How have you been using it in Watershow?
Jason Freese (photo)

In the Watershow stuff, I’ve been doing a lot of strings, a lot of pad stuff, and I do a lot of arpeggiated stuff. It’s unbelievable…the sounds on this thing, the pads. One thing that I love is [that] the layering capabilities of this keyboard [are] just phenomenal. It’s just awesome. And the easy control, not having to go through window through window through window to be able to control the layers—it’s just right there. It’s so easy.

So, I’ve been loving the pads on it, and the strings are so phenomenal. They’re the best string sounds you’re going to find out there, period. They’re just unbelievable. And then when you get into the arpeggiator, it goes so deep. You can pick the patterns and the note values.

Is it common for you to use an arpeggiator?

No, it’s not. Not [when] I’m playing with Jewel or Green Day or Goo Goo Dolls or whomever I’m playing with. But for [Watershow], it’s extremely important. It’s one of those things where I was kind of nervous about it, because I’m really choosy and picky [about sounds]. I might just be chasing a dream trying to find this arpeggio for this patch, because a lot of times the patterns are going to have to match the patch. If a patch has a slower attack, a certain pattern might not work with that slow attack, or vice versa. Because of the endless capabilities of [the JUPITER-80], it’s awesome. The whole arpeggiator aspect of it, which to me is very important, at least for what I’m doing [now], is phenomenal, because you have so much control over it.

How has the keyboard been inspiring your writing and other aspects of what you’ve been working on in the studio?

Because there are so many layering capabilities, it’ll give you a sound that’s this epic, huge, triumphant sound, and you’ll be like, that’s great, but maybe if I took off this layer it could work…and all of a sudden you start playing and you’re like, “Wow.” The patches kind of guide how you voice and what you’re going to play and everything. At the end of the day, to be able to be motivated and inspired by a patch, it’s the best feeling in the world when it happens, and it doesn’t happen all the time. [Laughs.] So, it’s awesome. It’s so cool the sounds that you can come up with, and the way you write will completely change because of this combination of sounds that they gave you.

Do you see yourself using the JUPITER-80 with Green Day?
Jason Freese (photo)

Absolutely. It’s funny; my main workhorse with Green Day is the Fantom-G8. That’s pretty much the only thing that I play. That is my keyboard. And now, having the JUPITER come in, we’re starting to do a lot more things. On our last tour, we were triggering some samples and stuff; I wasn’t doing it, because I’m playing live. If I’m playing piano, I can’t be triggering samples and stuff at the same time. So now to be able to have the capability to have two separate keyboards that I can lock up—it’s a done deal.

Who do see the JUPITER-80 appealing to?

Anybody! It’s such an amazing, universal keyboard because it has your Rhodes patches, your clavinets, your organic [stuff]…your strings, your cellos, it has all that. But at the same time, it’s got all the really heavy analog stuff. So you can be doing stuff like Muse and The Killers and very heavy keyboard music, and [then] you can hit the SuperNATURAL library on it and [play] a concert grand. It’s such a universal keyboard—anybody can use it. It doesn’t matter what the platform you’re doing is. Obviously, I can use it for Green Day. I can use it for doing orchestral stuff—I do a lot of TV stuff—it’s just amazing for that. Green Day, metal, Jewel…I can do anything on it.

In the studio, how does it compare to the soft synths that are out there?

I kind of look at soft synths as a shortcut. If I’m sitting there going, what would a piano sound like in this song, or what would an organ sound like in this song, or what would an old JUPITER string patch sound like, I’ll pull up a soft synth and that just gets me in the ballpark. But when I’m going for quality, cool sounds, it just doesn’t stack up to a keyboard like this sonically. It’s night and day. I tried to do it on our last tour, 21st Century Breakdown, with Green Day. There was a library of standup pianos, a sample library, and I had to run them off a laptop, and it was a nightmare. They sounded cool and everything, [but] the second I got live on the thing, I went straight back to my Fantom, and we threw away the laptop and never saw it ever again. So, I like using plug-ins, but at the end of the day I always end up using my Fantom, or now I’ll be using [the JUPITER-80].

Do you have any JUPITER-80 tips or tricks you can talk about?

To be one-hundred-percent honest, I’m not a great programmer. So, when I start programming stuff and tweaking on sounds—and I’ve tweaked a ton of sounds [in the JUPITER-80]—it’s very top-layer tweaking. Another thing that is great about this keyboard is that you don’t have to get super, super internally deep into it to start tweaking. I know that there are a lot of guys that love doing that; I’m not one of them personally. I’m not one of the guys that loves to dig a thousand layers into a patch. If I can’t do it with the press of a couple screens, you kind of lose me. It’s just the way my brain works.

There’s so much stuff you can do with this thing on a very top layer. For instance, this keyboard has so many amazing layered patches that I can go, “I love that, but maybe the lead patch is a little hot in the mix,” and I can just grab the slider and boom, that’s great. Or how about this patch has got four sounds layered on top, but the one in the middle? If I could lose that, it would have more articulation. Or maybe it would be a pad that was a little too loud. So for me, that’s the kind of tweaking that I do. [It’s] important for me to have a keyboard like this, because I don't like to be sitting there tweaking on sounds. I like a keyboard that, out of the box, sounds amazing. And that’s what this keyboard is.

Is there anything else you’d like to add about the JUPITER-80?

I could go on forever. The great thing is that if you have a JUPITER and you have a Fantom, you never need another keyboard ever again, because every sound that you could possibly ever, ever need are in these keyboards. That’s the greatest thing ever, because I’m so tired of having 20 keyboards in the studio and you’re like, I need that one sound—go get that keyboard, let’s plug it in. That gets old, you know? It’s rad having it all in one keyboard.   

Do you think the JUPITER-80 is a keyboard that will be around for a long time?

I think it’s a keyboard that is going to be around forever, and I’ll tell you why. Technology, starting out with the Minimoog to the DX-7 to the blah-blah-blah, there are all these milestones. At the level that we’re at with technology right now—and at the level especially of the SuperNATURAL sounds on this thing—you’re kind of at the top of what you can do. Now it sounds exactly like a violin. It sounds exactly like a JUPITER-8. The piano sounds, the Rhodes sounds, it’s like you can’t really take it any higher. It’s there. You can A/B it with a real one. You’re not going to get any better. So, because of that, there’s really nowhere to go; it’s done. You can keep the thing until you die. [Laughs.]

What do you love about what you do?
Jason Freese (photo)

I love that I get to play music. And sometimes I feel guilty. [Here’s] a quick story I’ll never forget, being on the American Idiot tour [with Green Day]: we were maybe three-fourths of the way through the tour; it was very long tour, two years long. And we’re in a bus. Everyone in a band, you get a little homesick. You’re out on the road. You don’t see your family, your friends. I remember waking up on the bus. I was the first one up, and I was just sitting there going, I’d love to see my wife or go home and sleep in my own bed. I was just a little down. And I opened up the curtain; we were in Phoenix in the middle of summer, outside of Phoenix in the desert. And I remember seeing these guys laying tar, and it was maybe 7:30 in the morning, and it was already like 102 [degrees]. These guys are laying tar, and I felt like such an idiot; I’m in one of the biggest bands in the world, I get to play music for a living, and I get to wake up and do this everyday. How selfish could that be to think that? I’m the luckiest guy in the world. 

What are some high points in your career?

Playing in front of 300,000 people at the Berlin Wall for Live 8. That was huge. Playing Wembley Stadium, headlining Wembley Stadium. [Those] would probably be my two top memories of playing as a professional.

How do you think that Roland technology helps you with your music?

The way Roland helps me is they make me sound like the instrument I need to be playing, so when I’m playing a cello patch, it sounds like a cello. I’ve had other keyboards in the past that when I pull up a cello or I pull up a piano or an organ or whatever, it is their version of a cello or piano, and it doesn’t sound like an authentic cello or an authentic piano. And that’s what I need. I’m not buying a keyboard or using a keyboard because I want to hear some company’s interpretation of what a piano is. So Roland helps me convince everyone out there that I’m actually playing that sound, I’m playing the actual instrument. And it makes me look good.